K2 Literary Fall 2020 France, Holland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain

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fiction Marianne Apostolides...... 5 Matt Cahill...... 6 Nancy Jo Cullen...... 7 J.J. Dupuis...... 8 Chris Eaton...... 10 Samantha Garner...... 11 Derek Mascarenhas...... 12 A.G. Pasquella...... 13 Susan Perly...... 15 Laisha Rosnau...... 16 Sheung-King...... 17 Anne Stone...... 18 Teri Vlassopoulos...... 19 Iona Whishaw...... 20 Andrew Wilmot...... 21 Lindsay Zier-Vogel...... 22

nonfiction Michelle Bilodeau and Karen Cleveland...... 24 Del Cowie...... 25 Cynthia Cruz...... 26 Christopher Dewolf...... 27 Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford...... 28 Ariel Gordon...... 29 Emily Lycopolus...... 30 Erika Nielsen...... 31 Bahar Orang...... 32 Amanda Orlando...... 33 Hana Shafi...... 34 Johanna Skibsrud...... 35 Erin Wunker...... 36 Julia Zarankin...... 37

children's/YA Charlene Challenger...... 39 fiction Fiction Marianne Apostolides I Can't Get You Out of My Mind

“Apostolides has established herself as a writer who takes on the most intimate, perverse, and complicated elements of human desire fearlessly and intellectually. She has a slightly terrifying ability to ride the most emotionally charged idea to its devastating conclusion.” –Canadian Notes & Queries

What does it mean to say “I love you”?

Ariadne is a single, fortysomething writer and mother embroiled in an affair with a married man. At the core of her current manuscript, a book about the declaration of love, is the need to understand why: why her lover has returned to his wife, why their relationship still lingers in her mind, why she’s unable to conquer her longing. To make ends meet while writing, she joins a research study in which she’s paid to live with an AI device called Dirk.

But the study quickly enters uncharted territory. Capable of mapping Ariadne’s brain—and, to Publication: April 2020 some extent, reading her mind—Dirk calls into question issues of both privacy and conscious- Publisher: Book*hug ness: how we communicate our thoughts to others, what it means to embody our desires, and (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ whether we ought to act on them. translation rights) Rights Sold: -Book*hug (World)

Marianne Apostolides is the author of seven books, three of which have been translated. She is a two-time recipient of a Chalmers Arts Fellowship, and winner of the 2017 K.M. Hunter Award for Literature. Born in suburban New York, Marianne now lives in Toronto. Photo credit: Jorjas Photography Jorjas credit: Photo

5 Fiction Matt Cahill Radioland

Kris is an alt-rock musician who abruptly drops out of his popular band to rake over an un- processed trauma from his childhood; Jill is an outcast who operates in the shadows of the city, cursed with a dangerous type of magic that draws mysterious strangers to her. By chance, they start a correspondence with each other and a strange relationship begins—one that coils around their lives like a macabre spell. As they share their stories with one another, they each approach Cover the source of their misery and risk losing themselves, even their lives, in a darkness that seems to destined for them. come Everything Jill senses tells an intense story, so she numbs herself with alcohol to keep her head clear, hoping she'll meet someone who can tell her how she came to be the way she is. Kris struggles to maintain his grip on reality as he pulls apart the threads that make up his identity. Working through fallen mentors, splintered identities, and substance dependency, the two of them try to help each other make sense of their lives, though it may ultimately reveal one of them as a serial murderer. Manuscript available soon Radioland explores the absurdity of fame, the toxicity of trauma, and the morbid dangers un- Agent: Kelvin Kong earthed as we seek a greater understanding of ourselves. Rights Sold: Radioland is Matt Cahill's second novel, and steps further into the metaphysical social realism All rights available he has employed in his short fiction as well as in his debut novel, The Society of Experience, which Harper's Bazaar magazine picked as one of the best of fall 2015.

Matt Cahill is a Toronto writer. His novel, The Society of Experience (Wolsak & Wynn), was picked as one of the top reads of 2015 by Harper’s Bazaar. His short fiction has been published with Found Press and The Rusty Toque. His non-fiction has appeared in the Humber Literary Review, Torontoist, Ryeberg, and Best Canadian Essays 2017. Photo credit: Katia Taylor Photography Taylor Katia credit: Photo

6 Fiction Nancy Jo Cullen The Western Alienation Merit Badge “A queer prairie novel of my dreams—electric, funny, hot, heartbreaking, scathing, like a mix of Sarah Schulman and Chandra Mayor. The Western Alienation Merit Badge flashes effortlessly back and forth between four decades of sisterhood, poverty, estrangement, grief, queerness and, well, alienation. And the ache, the ache of queer people and family. I love this book just as much as I loved Canary, Cullen’s book of short stories, and I hope it’s not her last.” –Casey Plett, author of Little Fish and A Safe Girl to Love

“I loved many things about this book. The timeframe, the setting, the characters—all of which felt authentic and layered and painfully honest. But I loved Nancy's writing most of all. She has a gift of capturing the smallest moments of our lives and turning them into brilliant gems.” –Brian Francis, author of Natural Order Publication: May 2019 Set in Calgary in 1982, during the recession that arrived on the heels of Canada’s National Publisher: Energy Program, The Western Alienation Merit Badge follows the Murray family as they struggle Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books with grief and find themselves on the brink of financial ruin. After the death of her stepmother, (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ Frances “Frankie” Murray returns to Calgary to help her father, Jimmy, and her sister, Berna- translation rights) dette, pay the mortgage on the family home. When Robyn, a long-lost friend, becomes their house guest old tensions are reignited and Jimmy, Bernadette and Frances find themselves Rights Sold: increasingly alienated from one another. -Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books (World) Part family drama, part queer coming-of-age story, The Western Alienation Merit Badge explores the complex dynamics of a small family falling apart.

Nancy Jo Cullen is the fourth recipient of the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT Emerging Writers. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph-Humber and her short story collection, Canary, was the winner of the 2012 Metcalf-Rooke Award. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. She lived in Calgary for over two decades and still returns regularly to connect with family and friends. She now lives in Kingston, Canada. Photo credit: Karen Ritchie Karen credit: Photo

7 Fiction J.J. Dupuis Lake Crescent (Book 2 in the Creature X Series)

A body is discovered in the water where a documentary crew search for legendary lake monster Cressie.

As host of the cryptozoological documentary series Creature X, Laura Reagan and her team are shooting an episode of Creature X on Cressie, a legendary giant eel, in Robert’s Arm, New- foundland. But what begins as a simple TV shoot takes a drastic turn when a body is discovered in the lake by the crew, the first step in unravelling a cold case that involves prominent members of the town.

Agent: Kelvin Kong Publication: July 2021 Publisher: Dundurn Rights Sold: -Dundurn (North America, English)

Jeff Dupuis is a Toronto-based writer. His fiction, satire and poetry have appeared in Foliate Oak, the Spadina Literary Review, Valve, The Lapine and University of Toronto Magazine. J.J. was a regular con- tributor to The Barnstormer. He is the co-founder of The Quarantine Review, an ongoing literary journal based on the COVID-19 pandemic.

When not in front of a computer, he can be found haunting the river valleys of Toronto, where he lives and works. Follow his journeys on Instagram, at @donvalleysafari.

8 Fiction J.J. Dupuis Roanoke Ridge (Book 1 in the Creature X Series)

“A fun, engaging read, written with lots of informed insider insight on a fascinating field — and with some neat cameos from the real world of Sasquatch research and investigation.” –Dr. Darren Naish, palaeozoologist, University of Southhampton

“With Roanoke Ridge, J.J. Dupuis gives us a mystery centring around that primal human need to believe that something is out there. The book is mischievous, zany, and fast-paced, and it skewers our pop-culture lust the whole way through.” –Jeff Parker, author of Where Bears Roam the Streets

“Brilliant … indeed an excellent book.” –Maureen Jennings, author of the Murdoch Mystery series

Laura Reagan ventures into the Oregon woods in search of her mentor, who vanished amidst a Agent: Kelvin Kong rash of Bigfoot sightings. Publication: March 2020

When Bigfoot researcher Professor Berton Sorel goes missing in the temperate rainforest of Publisher: Dundurn Roanoke Ridge, Oregon, help is summoned in the form of his former star pupil, Laura Reagan, Rights Sold: online science populist and avowed skeptic. But what begins as a simple search-and-rescue op- -Dundurn eration takes a drastic turn when a body is discovered—and the body isn’t the professor. (North America, English)

Caught in the fallout of the suspicious death, perplexed by a sudden wave of Bigfoot sightings, and still desperately searching for Professor Sorel, Reagan reluctantly admits two things: one, that her old mentor was right about there being secrets hidden in Roanoke Ridge, and two, that it’s up to her to uncover them.

9 Fiction Chris Eaton Symphony No. 3

“Symphony No. 3 is not only a vibrant dramatization of the life of Camille Saint-Saëns, but also a profound meditation on the place of music in culture, and of the tension between art and life. Eaton’s language is orchestral in range, and there are wise epigrams worthy of Wilde (“people who believe too much know nothing; people who know too much believe nothing”). The novel is rich in period detail, along with some imaginative departures from the historical record. Like the organ work for which it is named, Symphony No. 3 is a sumptuous achievement.” –Steven Moore, author of The Novel: An Alternative History

“These sentences! That cover! This book! What a marvelous reading experience!” –David Gutowski, Largeheartedboy.com

Symphony No. 3 follows the life of renowned French composer Camille Saint-Saëns as he as- cends from child prodigy to worldwide fame. As his acclaim grows in Paris, the musical world around him clamours with competitors, dilettantes, turncoats and revenge seekers. At the height of his success, Camille leaves everything behind to embark on a Dantean quest for his dead Publication: October 2019 lover, Henri. At the end of this adventure, still haunted by the holes in his past, he takes up an Publisher: Book*hug invitation to journey by ocean-liner to the New World. (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ translation rights) Finely crafted in its own unique rhythmic language, Symphony No. 3 is cast in four sections to mirror Saint-Saëns’s famous work, popularly known as the Organ Symphony. Written and Rights Sold: performed in London, England in the infamous late 1880s, this was the composition he hoped -Book*hug (World) would finally destroy Beethoven’s stranglehold on the industry and reinvent the form.

Though set in the decades surrounding the fin de siècle, Symphony No. 3 speaks directly to our present moment and the rise of political violence.

Chris Eaton is the author of three previous novels, including Chris Eaton, a Biography (Book*hug, 2013), selected as one of the Books of the Year by Quill and Quire and the Toronto Star. He spent many years making music in the band Rock Plaza Central. He currently lives in Sackville, New Brunswick, with his partner and two children. Photo credit: John Haney John credit: Photo

10 Fiction Samantha Garner The Quiet is Loud

When Freya Tanangco was ten years old, she dreamed her mother's death. It was a dream that came true mere days later. After a childhood of disturbingly prophetic dreams, Freya had to face a horrible truth: she was a veker, one of the scorned second-class citizens with enhanced mental abilities. Vekers have been feared and hated since the seventies, when a young boy named Alan Q accidentally caused a group of people go to catatonic. He was given up to scientists, who Cover experimented on him and then abandoned him to the system. to Since then, vekers have lived in fear of violence, and there aren't many Freya can trust. Her come novelist father is famous for an explosive book about their family - and hates vekers. Revealing her secret to him is impossible. For years, she's been keeping her head down, subsuming her ability under a carefully constructed normal life.

When Freya's dreams begin to bleed into her waking life and cause injury, she joins a secret veker “support group” under an assumed name. Here, she learns how to control her prophetic dreams and finds a community of people she'd never imagined—people like her. For the first Agent: Kelvin Kong time, she starts to build an identity with her ability as a point of pride rather than fear. Publication: Fall 2021 But when she has an alarming vision about a loved one and her true identity is threatened by a Publisher: Invisible Publishing fellow veker, Freya realizes she's going to have to fight dirty to defend the truth. (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ translation rights) Set in a world just one degree removed from our own, The Quiet is Loud balances simmering Rights Sold: tension with familiar ideas of belonging, shifting friendships, and the myths we create to keep -Invisible Publishing (World) ourselves at bay. It invites readers to examine the true cost of a life kept quiet.

Samantha Garner is a Toronto-based writer. Her short fiction and poetry has previously appeared in Broken Pencil, Sundog Lit, Kiss Machine, The Fiddlehead, Storychord, and WhiskeyPaper. Continually searching for new ways to share a story, she’s also created several handmade books and zines, and has been blogging since the Geocities glory days of the late ’90s.

She can be found online at samanthagarner.ca and on Instagram at @samanthakgarner. Photo credit: Susanna Kaapu Susanna credit: Photo

11 Fiction Derek Mascarenhas Coconut Dreams

“This charming collection of stories resides between a suburban childhood in Canada and inherited, often mythic, tales from Goa that belong to the elders. Characters decide on love with rings lost at sea and soothe babies with stories of elephants in mountains. The voices in these stories are from people who seem far away and yet are inside us. Prepare to be delighted.” –Kim Echlin, author of Under the Visible Life

“The stories in Derek Mascarenhas’s Coconut Dreams remind one of the high stakes in a child’s world, the way that danger looms just fractionally outside safety. Like all proper enchantments, these vignettes are dark, light, strange, and vivid such that they delight and charm in equal portions.” –Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, author of All the Broken Things

“In this evocative collection, Derek Mascarenhas takes up the fictional Pinto family and turns it gently in his hands, revealing new truths — and new questions — with every shift in point of view. A moving, multifaceted debut.” –Alissa York, author of The Naturalist Publication: April 2019 Publisher: Coconut Dreams explores the lives of the Pinto family through seventeen linked short stories. Book*hug Starting with a ghost story set in Goa, India in the 1950s, the collection shifts to the unique (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ perspectives of two adolescents, Aiden and Ally Pinto. Both first generation Canadians, these translation rights) siblings tackle their adventures in a predominantly white suburb with innocence, intelligence and a timid foot in two distinct cultures. Derek Mascarenhas takes a fresh look at the world Rights Sold: of the new immigrant and the South Asian experience in Canada. In these stories, a daughter -Book*hug (World) questions her father’s love at an Ikea grand opening; an aunt remembers a safari-gone-wrong in -Les Éditions l'Interligne Kenya; an uncle’s unrequited love is confronted at a Hamilton Goan Association picnic; a boy (French Canada) tests his faith amidst a school-yard brawl; and a childhood love letter is exchanged during the building of a backyard deck. Singularly and collectively, these stories will move the reader with their engaging narratives and authentic voices.

Derek Mascarenhas is a graduate of the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program, a finalist and runner-up for the Penguin Random House of Canada Student Award for Fiction, and a nominee for the Marina Nemat Award. His fiction has been published in places such as Joyland, The Dalhousie Review, Switchback, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Cosmonauts Avenue, and The Antigonish Review. Derek is one of four children born to parents who emigrated from Goa, India, and settled in Burlington, Ontario. A backpacker who has traveled across six continents, Derek currently resides in Toronto. Coconut Dreams is his first book. Photo credit: Khadeja Reid credit: Photo

12 Fiction A.G. Pasquella Season of Smoke (Book 3 in the Jack Palace Series)

It looks like ex-con Jack Palace’s troubles will never end when he is pressured by the mob to kill one of his best friends.

Jack Palace is trying to go legit with his own security company—but his old life keeps trying to pull him back in. A mobster named Sammy DiAngelo wants revenge for a killing that happened in Jack’s past. DiAngelo blames Jack’s friend Grover for the murder, and gives Jack an ultima- tum: kill Grover or be killed himself. Meanwhile, Grover has plans of his own. He want to rip off the mob, and he needs Jack’s help to do it.

Jack is desperate to start a new life with Suzanne, a woman from his past … but is he desperate enough to kill? Agent: Kelvin Kong Publication: February 2021 Publisher: Dundurn Rights Sold: -Dundurn (North America, English/French)

A.G. Pasquella's writing has appeared in various spots including McSweeney’s, Wholphin, The Believer, Black Book, Broken Pencil and Little Brother. Pasquella’s story “I Was A Teenage Minotaur”, originally published by Joyland, was included in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writ- ing. Pasquella has published three novellas: Why Not A Spider Monkey Jesus? (Which also appeared as a thirty-page excerpt in McSweeney’s #11), NewTown and The This & The That. He is the co-editor (along with Terri Favro) of PAC’N HEAT: A Noir Homage to Ms. Pac-Man.

When he’s not writing, A.G. makes music with his band Miracle Beard. He lives in Toronto with his wife and their two children. Photo credit: Julia Chan Julia credit: Photo

13 Fiction A.G. Pasquella Carve the Heart (Book 2 in the Jack Palace Series) “Sharply written, suspenseful and often funny as hell, Carve the Heart smashes its way through the streets of a noirishly entertaining Toronto the Bad like an out-of-control car chase. This is a book up to its shapely ass in double crosses, hot stakes poker games, rescue plans that go side- ways, broken noses, strippers, bikers, drug heists, hot sex, plot twists and bottomless tumblers of smoky Scotch sipped in an illegal casino tucked away somewhere in Kensington Market. ” –Terri Favro, author of Sputnik’s Children

“Pasquella vividly captures the dog-eat-dog existence of the Toronto underworld.” –Publishers Weekly

“Getting impatient with hard-boiled conventions? Try this.” –Booklist

Ex-con Jack Palace returns in a world of violence, heartbreak, and revenge. Agent: Kelvin Kong Cassandra, the woman who broke Jack Palace’s heart, is suddenly back in his life. She owes $600,000 to a brutal gangster who has threatened her life, and she needs Jack’s help. Meanwhile, Publication: November 2019 Melody, Jack’s new girlfriend, has set a dangerous plan of her own in motion. Things start to get Publisher: Dundurn violent when Cassandra suddenly disappears. But not everyone believes Cassandra is in danger. Is Jack being set up? Rights Sold: -Dreamscape (Audio) Bikers, mobsters, and strippers collide as Jack storms the mean streets of Toronto searching for -Dundurn Cassandra. To find her, he must rip open old wounds and confront new enemies. But as loyalties (North America, English/French) falter and secrets are revealed, Jack begins to wonder who he can really trust. If he doesn’t figure it out fast, he—and everyone he cares about—could end up dead.

Yard Dog (Book 1 in the Jack Palace Series)

"The writing here is very impressive: gritty and profane but also (in the right places) tender and quite moving." –Booklist

“A rusty syringe of lurid pulp thrills. Pasquella's love of old school crime fiction is clear, but like a beer bottle smashed across your jaw, he’s jolted the genre into the 21st century.” –Elan Mastai, author of All Our Wrong Todays

“An old-school noir romp through the belly of the city, splashing sex and violence all over Spadina Avenue. Pasquella confidently squeezes pulp right out of the pavement and onto the page.” –Andrew F. Sullivan, author of Waste and All We Want is Everything

Honour-bound ex-mob enforcer Jack Palace owes a life-debt to Tommy, the wild son of a Mafia boss. After being released from prison, Jack hits the streets to collect money for Tommy to repay Agent: Kelvin Kong his debt. Meanwhile, Tommy’s father is on his deathbed and other gangsters are waiting to seize control. Publication: November 2018 Publisher: Dundurn Jack plans a better, safer life for himself and his girlfriend Suzanne but after Tommy’s father dies, Jack finds himself caught in the crossfire of a mob war, doing things he never wanted to do, for Rights Sold: people he never wanted to work for in the first place. -Dundurn (North America, English/French) Now Jack has to navigate through hit men, backstabbers, and gritty neighborhoods toward a love, and life, that is far from certain.

Goodfellas meets Richard Stark, Yard Dog is a hard-boiled and fast-paced story with a mot- ley cast of lethal characters including a yacht-owning assassin, a loyal Triad member with the patience of a saint, an emotionally sensitive mob heavy, and a legion of scofflaws. It's old-school noir with an updated twist—faster, funnier and sexy as hell.

14 Fiction Susan Perly Stella Atlantis

With the dead you can go anywhere.

When novelist Johnny Coma's daughter comes back from the dead as a talking octopus, will he be finally be able to write her story? Will his estranged wife, renowned war photographer Vivienne Pink, even believe him? In Stella Atlantis, the stunning follow-up to her visionary desert novel Death Valley, Susan Perly returns to the lives of these troubled artists, haunted by the death of their young daughter, Stella, killed on the sidewalk outside their home, as they search for healing in separate cities and with new lovers.

Moving in and out of Toronto, Amsterdam and Barcelona, across the Mediterranean to Ibiza and out to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, Perly’s prose enacts grieving itself in the twinned stories of Johnny and Vivienne. Playfully dark and filled with beautiful flights of imagery, this is a story of fathers and daughters, of love lost and love reborn, of the redemptive power of art, the transformative power of the sea and how we can dare to reach for radiance and redemption. Publication: November 2020 Publisher: Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ translation rights) Rights Sold: -Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books (World)

Susan Perly has worked as a journalist, war correspondent and radio producer for the CBC. In the early ’80s her Letters from Latin America for Peter Gzowski’s Morningside reported from locales such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Chiapas. During the Iran–Iraq war she broadcast Letters from Baghdad, and she produced many documentaries for the weekly program Sunday Morning. Perly is the author of the jazz novel Love Street, and Death Valley, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She lives in Toronto with her husband, the poet Dennis Lee. Photo credit: Dennis Lee credit: Photo

15 Fiction Laisha Rosnau Little Fortress

“Little Fortress is a sublime novel that asks what happens when you rebel against the narrow strictures of your life. When Miss Inger-Marie Jüül rides away from her family’s farm, her story spirals through time, through two world wars, ranging from lonely Danish lighthouses to Cairo, from Italian villas to Okanagan orchards. This is a haunting, sweeping story, both mournful and stitched with a lilt of hope.” –Eden Robinson, author of Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift

“Little Fortress lives and breathes. Based on real people, it builds a deep and convincing world of its own. Rosnau’s portraits of three women, especially her voicing of Miss Jüül, are indelible. An unforgettable novel.” –Alix Hawley, author of All True Not a Lie in It and My Name Is a Knife

“There’s something wonderfully subversive about Laisha Rosnau’s new novel, Little Fortress. Her women, driven by passion and pain, live on their own terms in a world that would reduce them to eccentric curiosities when they are so much more. Rosnau does a brilliant job of resurrecting Publication: October 2019 and reimagining this piece of Canadian history.” Publisher: –Annabel Lyon, author of The Golden Mean and The Sweet Girl Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ In this captivating and intricate novel, Laisha Rosnau introduces us to three women, each of translation rights) whom is storied enough to have their own novel and who, together, make for an unforgettable tale. Based on the true story of the Caetanis, Italian nobility driven out of their home by the Rights Sold: rise in fascism who chose exile in Vernon, BC, Rosnau brings to life Ofelia Caetani, her daugh- -Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books ter Sveva Caetani and their personal secretary, Miss Juul. Miss Juul is the voice of the novel, a (World) diminutive Danish woman who enters into employment with the Caetani family in Italy before the birth of Sveva, stays with them through twenty-five years of seclusion at their home in Ver- non, and past the death of Ofelia.

Little Fortress is a story of a shifting world, with the death of its age-old nobility, and of the intri- cacies of the lives of women caught up in these grand changes. It is a story of friendship, class, betrayal and love.

Laisha Rosnau is the author of the best-selling novel, The Sudden Weight of Snow (McClelland & Stewart), and four critically acclaimed, award-winning collections of poetry. Her work has been nomi- nated for several awards, including the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Pat Lowther Award, three times for the CBC Poetry Prize, and has won the Blue Heron Poetry Prize and the Acorn- Plantos Poetry Award. Rosnau's work has been published across Canada, in the US, UK and Australia. She teaches in UBC Okanagan's Creative Writing Program. Rosnau lives in Coldstream, BC, where she and her family are resident caretakers of Bishop Wild Bird Sanctuary.

Visit her website at laisharosnau.com. Photo credit: Renee Leveille credit: Biebly Photo

16 Fiction Sheung-King You are Eating an Orange. You are Naked.

“Sheung-King has written a wonderfully unexpected and maverick love story but also a novel of ideas that hopscotches between Toronto, Macau, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Prague. It is enchant- ing, funny, and a joy to read.” –Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life

“A tale of two rich and rootless people that oozes the horror and confusion of love, while staying somehow still desperately romantic, and so gloriously sad. This novel is also about something else: it gives the cold shoulder to the dominant gaze and its demands to control the Asian body, carving out a thrilling space beyond whiteness. I didn’t want it to end.” Thea Lim, author of An Ocean of Minutes, a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

A young translator living in Toronto frequently travels abroad—to Hong Kong, Macau, Prague, Tokyo—often with his unnamed lover. In restaurants and hotel rooms, the couple begin telling Publication: October 2020 folk tales to each other, perhaps as a way to fill the undefined space between them. Theirs is a Publisher: comic and enigmatic relationship in which emotions are often muted and sometimes masked Book*hug by verbal play and philosophical questions, and further complicated by the woman’s frequent (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ unexplained disappearances. translation rights)

You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is an intimate novel of memory and longing that Rights Sold: challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Mu- -Book*hug (World) rakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King’s debut is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Canadian literature.

Sheung-King is a writer and educator. His work has appeared in PRISM International, The Shanghai Literary Review, and The Humber Literary Review, among others. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Guelph and Sheridan College. You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is Sheung- King’s debut book. Originally from Hong Kong, he lives in Toronto.

17 Fiction Anne Stone Girl Minus X

“Stone’s brilliant, breathless novel will put readers in mind of Emily St. John Mandel and Margaret Atwood.” –Publishers Weekly

“Girl Minus X is what happens when great writing meets a mesmeric, page-turning plot. The best speculative fiction captures what we dimly imagine but intimately feel; and this book wins in its gripping tale of intense social crises, complicated family members, dismal pressures from school and a young woman awakening to her own uncanny power. Anne Stone will captivate both teens and adults alike.” –David Chariandy, author of Soucouyant and Brother

“What if you could let go of your trauma? Now, what if that process was forced on you by a virus that robbed you of all memories? Girl Minus X explores the bonds between humans surviving mid-apocalypse. Nobody writes like Anne Stone. Get prepared for the unthinkable.” –Emily Pohl-Weary, author of Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl and Ghost Sick

As the world around them collapses under the weight of a slow, creeping virus that erodes Publication: October 2020 memory, fifteen-year-old Dany and her five-year-old sister are on the edge of their own Publisher: personal apocalypse—fearing separation at the hands of child services. When a dangerous new Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books strain of the virus emerges, Dany careens headlong into crisis, determined to save her sister. (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ Together with her best friend and reluctant history teacher, they must flee the city. Along the translation rights) way, Dany faces a series of devastating choices: Can she make the dangerous attempt to break her aunt out of the prison-hospice? And just how much is Dany willing to sacrifice to ensure her Rights Sold: sister and her friends survive? -Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books (World) Girl Minus X is a meditation on the gift that is memory and its hidden costs, pitting a fear of forgetting against a desire to erase the past.

Anne Stone is the author of three novels, Delible (2007), Hush (1999) and jacks: a gothic gospel (1998). She is currently at work on a collection of short fiction. She spent her childhood in Toronto, lived in Montreal, and now makes her home in Vancouver, where she teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Capilano University. Photo credit: Hiromi Goto Hiromi credit: Photo

18 Fiction Teri Vlassopoulos Living Expenses

Laura Cortez is exactly one year and one week older than her sister, Claire, but they’ve always been mistaken for fraternal twins. When Claire skipped the third grade and joined Laura in the fourth, they stopped correcting people and embraced the confusion. As the only children to a single mother who immigrated from the Philippines, they remain exceptionally close until early adulthood when Claire accepts a job offer in California and their lives diverge. Cover Laura and Joe, her husband and high school sweetheart, have become cozy in their domesticity to after spending a large portion of their twenties travelling. Their jobs are steady (Laura is a poet come with a day job editing a magazine for professional actuaries; Joe is a lawyer), so they decide to start a family. But when they have problems conceiving they begin increasingly more invasive fertility treatments.

Meanwhile, Claire is a computer programmer at a Silicon Valley-based startup focusing on arti- ficial intelligence. Working for a company funded by millions of dollars in venture capital cash, Claire feels conflicted by the flush of monetary success and the implications of the technol- Manuscript available soon ogy she’s helping create. When Claire learns about tthe extent of her sister’s fertility issues, she Agent: Kelvin Kong reveals that her company has paid for her to freeze her eggs. She wants to donate them to Laura and Joe, but Laura hesitates at the offer. Rights Sold: All rights available Living Expenses interrogates the strain that accompanies even the strongest of relationships. Set firmly in the quickly evolving modern day, it captures the inevitable creep of technology into all facets of our lives, from communication to even reproduction. The book is also about mother- hood—not the act of it, but motherhood as a goal or decision or interruption to a woman’s life. Ranging from a reproductive tourism fertility clinic in Greece to a meditation retreat in the Mojave Desert to a holy site in the Philippines, Living Expenses is told in snapshots from Laura and Claire’s lives as they find themselves in surprising, but somehow inevitable situations.

Teri Vlassopoulos lives and writes in Toronto. Her collection of short stories, Bats or Swallows (Invisible Publishing, 2010) was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best first collection of short fiction and the ReLit Award.

Her fiction has appeared in literary magazines such as Room Magazine and carte blanche, and has been shortlisted twice for This Magazine‘s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Her non-fiction has been included in the anthologies The Art of Trespassing and She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out and fighting back (Tightrope Books) and has been published at The Toast, The Rumpus, The Millions and Bookslut. She also wrote, photocopied, stapled and sometimes sewed the zines melt the snow and The Second Part.

Her favourite meal is breakfast.

19 Fiction Iona Whishaw A Deceptive Devotion: A Lane Winslow Mystery, Book 6

A wedding is on the horizon for Lane Winslow and Inspector Darling. As one of the few Russian speakers in her community, Lane is obliged to act as translator and hostess for Countess Orlova, an elderly Russian woman who has tracked her missing brother to the Nelson area. Nelson PD investigates, but then the murder of a lone hunter in the hills above King’s Cove takes top priority.

Darling works the case with a Constable Oxley—a newcomer to the area, assigned in Constable Ames’ temporary absence—and a British agent contacts Lane to warn her to be on the lookout for a fleeing Russian defector. Bound by the Wartime Secrets Act, Lane is conflicted about keep- ing the information from Darling, especially when it begins to put a strain on their relationship.

Fans of Maisie Dobbs and the Kopp Sisters will delight in this rousing adventure of intrigue and espionage. Publication: April 2019 Publisher: TouchWood Editions (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ translation rights) Rights Sold: -TouchWood Editions (World)

Iona Whishaw is a former educator and social worker whose mother and grandfather were both spies during their respective wars. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband. Visit her at ionawhishaw.com.

20 Fiction Andrew Wilmot The Death Scene Artist

“From the jaw-dropping opening pages when we meet a protagonist perusing their remarkable inventory of 'outfits,' up to the very last page, this novel kept me riveted. This is a wonderful book, surreal, disturbing and liberating in the very best way.” –Suzette Mayr, author of Monoceros

“Wilmot brings a sensually complete sense of reality to the unreal worlds of on- and off-screen Hollywood. Wilmot's serious play with language and with form makes The Death Scene Artist a hypnotic, surprising novel that doesn’t sacrifice emotion for irony.” –Nathan Ripley, author of Find You in the Dark

M_____ is dying of cancer. Only thirty-two, an extra with a meagre list of credits to their name and afraid of being forgotten, M_____ starts recounting the strange, fantastic and ultimately tragic path of their love affair with the world’s greatest living “redshirt”—a man who has died or appeared dead in nearly eight hundred film and television roles. Agent: Kelvin Kong In a compelling narrative of blog entries interspersed with film script excerpts, The Death Scene Publication: October 2018 Artist immerses readers in a three-act surrealist exploration of the obsessive fault-finding of body dysmorphia and the dangerous desires of a man who has lived several hundred half-min- Publisher: ute lives without having ever experienced his own. Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books Rights Sold: Written in a semi-epistolary format mimicking that of a blog, The Death Scene Artist is a three- act surrealist exploration of film industry supplementals, the Cinderella complex, sexual denial, -Wolsak & Wynn/Buckrider Books fear of commitment, and the dangerous predilections of a man who has lived several hundred (North America) half-minute lives without having ever experienced his own.

Andrew Wilmot is a writer and editor based out of Toronto, Ontario. They have won awards for screenwriting and short fiction, with credits including Found Press, Glittership, Turn to Ash, Augur, THIS Magazine, and the anthologies Those Who Makes Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories and We Shall Be Monsters: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Two Centuries On. As an editor, they’ve worked with Drawn & Quarterly, ChiZine Publications, Broken River Books, ARP Books, Wolsak & Wynn, Playwrights Canada, the Literary Press Group, Wattpad, Freehand Books, and NeWest Press. They are also co-publisher and co-EIC, alongside editors Michael Matheson and Chinelo Onwualu, of the online magazine Anathema: Spec from the Margins. Books they’ve worked on have themselves taken home multiple awards from the Sunburst Awards, the Eisner Awards, and most recently the Shirley Jack- son Awards. Find them online at: andrewwilmot.ca, anathemamag.com, and on Twitter, hating every- thing about Twitter, @AGAWilmot. Photo credit: Hidden Exp[osure Photography Exp[osure Hidden credit: Photo

21 Fiction Lindsay Zier-Vogel Letters to Amelia

Grace Porter is a 30-something year old library tech who is captivated by the life of the famous pilot, Amelia Earhart. After her partner of seven years leaves her unexpectedly, Grace finds her- self in Newfoundland, where Amelia took off for both transatlantic flights. Reeling in grief, she starts writing letters to Amelia—her friend, her hero, her mentor, her confidante—who disap- peared over the Pacific in 1937. Cover Just as she begins to piece her life back together, Grace learns she is pregnant and begins exca- to vating her own history and building her personal strength, by digging up bits of inspiration in come the biographical remains of another.

Out of fear of losing herself in motherhood, Grace becomes fixated on Amelia’s final flight around the equator. The terrifying charge of her third trimester also coincides with new conspiracy theories about Amelia’s disappearance and a scientific search for Amelia’s remains on a tiny South Pacific island. Consumed by the anxiety of finding out what actually happened to Amelia during her final moments, Grace goes on one last pilgrimage. Publication: Fall 2021 Publisher: Book*hug (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ translation rights) Rights Sold: -Book*hug (World)

Lindsay Zier-Vogel is a Toronto-based writer, arts educator and the creator of the internation- ally acclaimed Love Lettering Project, a community engagement project. Since 2004, Lindsay has been asking participants in over 250 events to write love letters to the communities and hide them for strang- ers to find, spreading the love and getting people thinking and talking about why they love where they live. The project has been all over the world—from New York City to Whitehorse, Toronto to Teresopo- lis, Brazil, L.A. to London.

The Love Lettering Project has been featured in international media including The Atlantic’s CityLab, NPR, The Londonist, CBC Television’s The National, Global National, CTV’s Canada AM, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail and CBC Radio’s Metro Morning and World Report and was deemed one of the 50 reasons to love Toronto by Toronto Life.

22 nonfiction Non-Fiction Michelle Bilodeau and Karen Cleveland Holy (!) Matrimony: A Modern Guide to Conscious Coupling Let’s get conscious coupled, shall we?

Hands up if you’ve seen all the white tulle, pretty peonies and candles in mason jars that you Cover can handle? As two friends who got married just six weeks apart from each other, Karen and to Michelle went through the planning process as pals and would often kvetch about the “it’s tradi- come tion, you have to” quips from family and friends. They bucked the trends and married hella hot partners, all while sticking it to the patriarchy.

By breaking down the antiquated traditions of that #blessedweddingday, this book will help bethrothed pairs throw the icky bridal traditions to the curb in honour of getting the wedding of their actual dreams—ot the one we’ve been force-fed for decades by the bridal industry. Subjects: Inspiring couples to plan their wedding in a way that is meaningful to them, Holy (!) Matrimony Marriage, feminism, humour is part memoir, part handbook, and all about the feminism, baby. Agent: Kelvin Kong Publication: Spring 2021 Publisher: Dundurn Rights Sold: -Dundurn (North America, English)

Michelle Bilodeau and Karen Cleveland are Toronto-based writ- ers. They are friends, frequent collaborators and regular media contributors. They met as colleagues when working at a magazine. Karen asked Michelle to lunch for dating advice and the rest was history.

Between them, they have written for most of the major publications in Canada, including, the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Fashion Magazine, Refinery29 Canada and more. They have also both appeared on television, including CP24, The Social, eTalk and the like.

They allege to be clever, charming and (a little bit) funny.

24 Non-Fiction Del Cowie This is a Throwdown: A Toronto Hip-Hop History Drake is one of the most popular and influential artists in hip-hop, the most listened to genre of music in the world, according to streaming giant Spotify. Yet, despite Drake’s overwhelming influence beyond popular culture and his fervent championing of Toronto in his lyrics, music Cover and album covers, very little is known or documented of Toronto's rich hip-hop history to come This is A Throwdown: A Toronto Hip-Hop History seeks to change this reality. Spanning 30 years of music history in one of the world’s most diverse and unique cities, This Is A Throwdown traces Toronto’s early, overshadowed contributions to the global phenomenon of hip-hop culture and contextualizes its present-day position as a nexus point for creatives where Drake and other Toronto hip-hop acts articulate the musical present and hint at the world’s sonic future.

Subjects: Hip-hop, Toronto, history Agent: Kelvin Kong Publication: Spring 2022 Publisher: ECW Press Rights Sold: ECW Press (World)

Del Cowie is an Toronto-based music journalist and editor who has worked as an associate producer for CBC Music and the Peabody and International Emmy Award-winning Netflix series Hip Hop Evolu- tion. He has appeared on CBC Radio’s q, Here and Now, and Big City Small World.

Cowie was assistant editor and writer for Canadian national music publication Exclaim! for over a decade and has contributed to NOW, NOISEY, XXL and the National Post, among other publications. Since 2015, he produced and presented Before the 6ix, an ongoing panel discussion focusing on Toronto hip-hop history in association with the Toronto Public Library.

Cowie has been a member of the Polaris Music Prize jury since its 2006 inception.

25 Non-Fiction Cynthia Cruz Disquieting: Essays on Silence

“Cruz showcases her trademark spare palette and haptic focus in a brief, satisfying fifth collec- tion that hews close to the anxious, delirious mood of its predecessor.” –Publishers Weekly

When Cynthia Cruz was eleven years old, she suffered a life-altering trauma that changed the way she saw the world, and the way she saw herself in the world. In Disquieting: Essays on Silence, Cruz returns to that trauma in an attempt to understand her response to it—what she’s come to understand as a rejection of and resistance to the desires and ideologies of contempo- rary Neoliberal culture.

Tarrying with others who have provided examples of how to “turn away,” these essays inhabit the connections between mental illness, anorexia, refusal, silence and Neoliberalism. How do our bodies speak for us when words don’t suffice? How can we make ourselves understood when what we have to say is inarticulable? Cruz also explores the experience of being working- class and poor in contemporary culture, and how those who are silenced often turn to forms of Subjects: Essays, current issues disquietude that value open-endedness, complexity, and difficulty. Publication: April 2019 Publisher: Book*hug (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ translation rights) Rights Sold: -Book*hug (World)

Cynthia Cruz was born in Germany and grew up in Northern California. She is the author of four previous collections of poems. Her fifth collection is Dregs (Four Way Books, 2018). The editor of a new anthology of contemporary Latina poetry, Other Musics (forthcoming in 2019), Cruz is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder fellowship from Princeton University. She lives in Brooklyn. Photo credit: Steven Page Steven credit: Photo

26 Non-Fiction Christopher Dewolf The New Flâneur

The New Flâneur opens with an exhibition by architect Momoyo Kaijima in Venice, which brings to mind the pleasure of simply observing the city, its people and the spaces they inhabit. It’s like a flâneur who drifts through the city, watching the smalls dramas of life unfold, eaves- dropping on countless interactions, gazing up at forgotten architectural ornaments. Speaking with Kaijima, however, it becomes clear that such observation is not frivolous. By understanding urban life, one feels compelled to sustain and improve it. The flâneur has always been portrayed Cover as a passive figure, but what if that isn’t really the case? What happens when a flâneur to becomes engaged? come From Venice, the book moves on to Hong Kong, where the author has lived and worked for more than a decade. As we dodge double-decker buses and pass through markets where live fish churn inside plastic buckets, we experience the delights and frustrations of wandering the city. The book delves into the history of flâneurs from the 19th century to the present day. What drives someone to wander? And what do they do with the knowledge they glean from the streets? We begin to understand how keen observers like Jane Jacobs used their observations to push for change. In Toronto, where Jacobs spent the rest of her life after leaving New York, Subjects: Current issues, cities, we encounter a new breed of flâneurs like Suresh Dosh and Shawn Micallef, who are trying to civic engagement make sense of the inscrutable sprawl of a vast, multicultural city in the making. Agent: Kelvin Kong Through these experiences, we also begin to understand the limitations of the flâneur. Flâneurs seem to value sight above all else, shutting out the many other senses that shape the urban expe- Proposal available rience. The history of flâneurs is one of whiteness, maleness and privilege. And yet flâneurs have Rights Sold: also been considered a threat to the established order. Going beyond the well-worn depictions All rights available of flâneurs on the streets of Paris, London and New York, the book explores the role flâneurs have played in cities outside the Western world, especially those that exist in more authoritarian environments. We are introduced to Mary Ann O’Donnell, a flâneuse who has wandered through and documented the fast-changing streets of Shenzhen, China—all the while pushing for change.

From the streets, the book turns to the digital world, exploring how the internet has enabled a new kind of virtual flâneur who thrives on Google Street View and Instagram. An entertain- ing digression into the world of Street View art raises the question of how these new tools can be used to connect previously disparate people and places. We see how digital flâneurs can transcend borders that are growing ever more firm in real life. Back in the tumultuous streets of Hong Kong, we see how the cosmopolitan spirit of the flâneur is being perpetuated by a social media savvy generation of urban activists who use their experience of the city to seamlessly blend art, design, community activism and politics.

Christopher DeWolf is a journalist who has always been fascinated by cities. He writes about architecture, urbanism, design, art and culture, and when he is not roaming the streets of his adopted home of Hong Kong, he is cycling around his other adopted home, Montreal. After getting his start with Maisonneuve magazine and the Montreal Gazette, he began writing regularly for the South China Morning Post, Wall Street Journal and other publications. His work has also appeared in TIME, Roads & Kingdoms and CNN, and he is the managing editor of Zolima CityMag, a magazine of Hong Kong arts, culture and history. His first book is Borrowed Spaces: Life Between the Cracks of Modern Hong Kong, published by Penguin in 2017.

27 Non-Fiction Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford Soulmates On Ice: From Hometown Glory to Top of the Podium “Grit, heart, determination, belief—A truly inspirational read, so proud of Meagan and Eric.” –Elvis Stojko

“Eric is one of my greatest friends and I thought I knew it all. But reading this honest and exhilarating tale of how this team came to be, is a story I never knew—until now. This honest portrayal of two athletes who found their way to each other on their quest for Olympic glory, is an exceptional story of passion and sacrifice." –Patrick Chan, Olympic medalist

“Meagan and Eric’s story is all about perseverance and resilience, and Soulmates On Ice per- fectly encapsulates their career together. Their passion for skating is so palpable—even though I knew their journey well, it’s incredibly inspiring to read and see it all pieced together here.” –Jackie Wong, skating analyst Subjects: Memoir, teamwork Discover the unlikely path Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford followed en route to the top Publication: November 2018 of the world in figure skating. The Northern Ontario pairs skaters, who won a complete set of Olympic medals, reflect on how they developed a working relationship and honed their re- Publisher: Latitude 46 silience in a sport that often left them bloodied and bruised. Ultimately, the two-time world (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ champions earned the perfect, storybook ending to the sport they have adored since they laced translation rights) up their first pair of skates. Rights Sold: -Latitude 46 (World)

Northern Ontario skaters Meagan Duhamel of Lively, and Eric Radford of Balmertown, became the first pair in the world to land a throw quadruple Salchow at the Olympics. At the 2018 Win- ter Olympics, they led Canada to the team event gold and won the bronze in the individual pairs. They also won silver in the team event at the 2014 Olympics. The two-time world champions are also seven- time Canadian champions. Off ice, Duhamel is a certified holistic nutritionist and Radford is composer with his Grade 9 from the Royal Conservatory of Music. They live in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

28 Non-Fiction Ariel Gordon Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests —Shortlisted for the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award 2020—

“[Gordon is] the kind of person who instinctively sees, hears, thinks, imagines ... who wonders and is constantly curious and learning, finding nothing in the natural world dull.” –Matilda Magtree

“I felt a kinship with Gordon and all the places her curiousity led her, and with her commitment to working with both the gifts and limitations of the place she lives in. It made me think about all the ways it is possible to engage with urban nature: to tend, to celebrate, to protect, to find nourishment and inspiration.” –Luna Toronto

With intimacy and humour award-winning poet Ariel Gordon walks us through the streets Subjects: of Winnipeg and into the urban forest that is, to her, the city’s heart. Along the way she shares Essays, nature with us the lives of these urban trees, from the grackles and cankerworms of the spring, to the Publication: June 2019 flush of mushrooms on stumps in the summer and through to the red-stemmed dogwood of the winter. After grounding us in native elms and ashes, Gordon travels to BC's northern Rockies, Publisher: Wolsak & Wynn to Banff National Park and a cattle farm in rural Manitoba, and helps us to consider what we (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ expect of nature. Whether it is the effects of climate change on the urban forest or foraging in translation rights) the city, Dutch elm disease in the trees or squirrels in the living room, Gordon delves into our Rights Sold: relationships with the natural world with heart and style. In the end, the essays circle back to the -Wolsak & Wynn (World) forest, where the weather is always better and where the reader can see how to remake even the trees that are lost.

Ariel Gordon is the author of two collections of urban-nature poetry, both of which won the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. Recent projects include the anthology GUSH: menstrual manifestos for our times, co-edited with Tanis MacDonald and Rosanna Deerchild, and the third installment of the National Poetry Month in the Winnipeg Free Press project. She lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Photo credit: Mike Deal Mike credit: Photo

29 Non-Fiction Emily Lycopolus The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lover's Cookbook

“Deliciously unusual ways to enjoy olive oil and vinegar.” –Dr. Oz, The Good Life

“The most beautiful cookbook I’ve seen this year ... a great resource for people who adore fancy olive oils and vinegars and want to know how they can cook with them at home.” –Saskatoon StarPhoenix

“The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lover’s Cookbook satisfies the cravings of olive oil enthusiasts. The author draws on her decades of experience to impart the uses of great oil. It is a terrific cook- book — Lycopolus passionately wants everyone to know the difference a high quality extra- virgin olive oil can make to any dish. Emily Lycopolus is the rare expert we need. No other food writer brings more love to the subject.” –Washington Book Review Subjects: Cookbook A brand-new updated edition of The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lover’s Cookbook, which has sold Publication: April 2019 more than 13,000 copies to date. Publisher: TouchWood Editions Inspiring recipes for the olive oil and vinegar aficionado in a gorgeously photographed book— (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ these are the absolute best ways to elevate the flavour of your fare using fresh flavoured olive oils translation rights) and white and dark balsamic vinegars. Rights Sold: -TouchWood Editions Have you recently become enamoured with fresh and flavoured extra-virgin olive oil, infused (World English) olive oil, and flavoured balsamic vinegars, only to take them home and wonder: what exactly do I do with them?

These are simple but gratifying recipes that use 50 of the most popular and widely available olive oil and vinegar products to amplify the flavour in all kinds of dishes including appetizers, salads, soups, main dishes, baked goods, and desserts. You’ll also find inspiration to expand your rep- ertoire once you learn the basics of flavour pairing. With sections on ways to experiment with marinades, salad dressings, brines, and even cocktails, you’ll never run out of ways to use your favourite products. Every recipe is guaranteed to take your dish from ordinary to exceptional.

The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lover’s Cookbook provides you with possibilities that are truly endless.

Emily Lycopolus is owner of Olive the Senses (olivethesenses.com), a luxury olive oil and vinegar tasting room and shop and the founder of This Table Collective (ThisTable.com). She lives in Victoria with her husband, Steve, and their pug, Cedrik.

30 Non-Fiction Erika Nielsen Sound Mind: From Chaos to Composure Erika Nielsen, a young cellist, believed the extreme euphoric highs and crushing lows she ex- perienced were a normal part of being a musician—that they made her more creative, produc- tive, and in demand. When she became the musician she always dreamed of being Principal Cellist of an orchestra, she embarked on gruelling red-eye commutes, an impossible workload, and experienced alarming symptoms had her—and others—question her choices. Meanwhile, Erika suspected that she had something more than just “normal “ups and downs”. That all ended when, in a frenzy of hypomania, Erika consulted a psychiatrist, who gave her a shocking diag- nosis: bipolar disorder, type I. Now faced with treating a major mental illness, Erika was forced to turn her frenetic life around.

Sound Mind: From Chaos to Composure chronicles Erika’s journey through accepting her diag- nosis, learning about her condition, and through one habit at a time, taking the necessary steps Subjects: Memoir/self-help, towards a new normal in learning to live with a mental illness. Erika covers everything from mental health finding the right medication to nutrition to developing a support team, and offers useful tips and insights that will help readers of all ages take charge of their own lives and their own mental Agent: Kelvin Kong health. Publication: March 2019 Publisher: Trigger Publishing Both a practical guide for those living with bipolar disorder and other mental health conditions, and an inspiring story about Erika’s journey to cope with it, Sound Mind is a valuable resource Rights Sold: for anyone struggling with mental health issues, as well as their friends and family. With action- -Trigger Publishing (World English) able steps and a positive message, Sound Mind is dedicated to offering hope and ending the stigma towards mental illness.

Erika Nielsen is a multi-genre Canadian cellist who defies the odds of mental illness in her first book, Sound Mind: From Chaos to Composure. Erika has a multi-faceted career as a chamber musician, collaborative artist, orchestral player and educator, with a musicianship that spans Baroque and Classi- cal traditions to Contemporary and Popular genres. She has had the privilege of performing with artists such as Grammy-winning Kanye West for both MTV Canada and Live at the Concert Hall series, and with Juno-winning Johnny Reid for Canada’s Walk of Fame. Based in Toronto, she performs as a cham- ber musician, as well as rock albums with Classic Albums Live, with 25-piece Toronto Motown band The Big Sound, and throughout Canada and the USA with ELO tribute Strange Magic. As a writer, Erika is a blog contributor to BPHope, a magazine for people with bipolar disorder, and is the author of well- ness and mental health blog, Sound Mind. A passionate educator, Erika maintains a busy private studio and recently joined the faculty of National Music Camp of Canada. Also a visual artist, her collection of paintings, Chromaticism, has been showcased in both Toronto and Sudbury.

Photo credit: Trish Lindström Trish credit: Photo Visit Erika’s website at www.celloerika.com. You can also find her on www.soundmindbook.com.

31 Non-Fiction Bahar Orang Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty “A strikingly lyric thoughtful new voice, Orang writes with the knowledge that feeling is intelligence and thought is sensory. ‘What happens to beauty when it’s removed from its own dirt?’ Beauty is tangled with language, with a lover, with medicine, flowers, ocean, care, and compassion. These explorations are insightful, incisive, and beautiful—and yes, touching.” –Gary Barwin, Scotiabank Giller Prize-shortlisted author of Yiddish for Pirates

“Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty is an erotic conversation with the manifold relations of beauty. Refracted through the lens of caregiving and caretaking, Bahar Orang’s lyric voice roams through poetry, Persian myth, and hospitals to enchant the everyday, returning us to an intimacy beyond the page—back to the body. Orang guides us with heart-centred intelli- gence in this beautiful and wise book.” –Shazia Hafiz Ramji, author of Port of Being Subjects: Essays, aesthetics To devote oneself to the study of beauty is to offer footnotes to the universe for all the places and all the moments that one observes beauty. I can no longer grab beauty by her wrists and demand Publication: May 2020 articulation or meaning. I can only take account of where things touch. Publisher: Book*hug (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ Part lyric essay, part prose poetry, Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty grapples with translation rights) the manifold meanings and possibilities of beauty. Rights Sold: Drawing on her experiences as a physician-in-training, Orang considers clinical encounters and -Book*hug (World) how they relate to the concept and very idea of beauty. Such considerations lead her to ques- tions about intimacy, queerness, home, memory, love, and other aspects of human experience. Throughout, beauty is ultimately imagined as something inextricably tied to care: the care of lovers, on patients, of art and literature and the various non-human worlds that surround us.

Eloquent and meditative in its approach, beauty, here, beyond base expectations of frivolity and superficiality, is conceived of as a thing to recover. Where Things Touch is an exploration of an essential human pleasure, a necessary freedom by which to challenge what we know of ourselves and the world we inhabit.

Bahar Orang is a writer and physician-in-training living in Toronto. She has a BASc from McMaster University and an MA in Comparative Literature, from the University of Toronto. She completed her MD at McMaster University, and is now completing specialty training in psychiatry in Toronto. Her poetry and essays have been published in such places as GUTS, Hamilton Arts & Letters, CMAJ, and Ars Medica. Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty is her first book. Photo credit: Mel Mikhail Mel credit: Photo

32 Non-Fiction Amanda Orlando Everyone’s Welcome: The Art of Living and Eating Allergen Free Everyone’s “Amanda Orlando hasn’t let her food allergies stop her from making food a treasured part of her life.” –The New Family Podcast Welcome Everyone’s Welcome “If you or someone you love has severe food allergies and dietary restrictions, Amanda Or- The Art of Living and lando’s new cookbook is for you . . . Everyone’s Welcome is definitely a book for kitchen novices Eating as well as more experienced cooks with dietary conditions to consider. But Orlando’s offerings Allergen Free transcend the book’s allergen-free focus, underlined by the subtitle: The Art of Living and Eat- ing Allergen Free with an emphasis on the art of living and eating . . . a delight.” –EAT

Based on her experiences with anaphylaxis and living in a family with multiple food allergies, AMANDA ORLANDO author Amanda Orlando grew up with few resources about coping with anaphylaxis both in her own kitchen and in other’s. Through years of self-education, Amanda collected recipes, found substitutions, and food brands to suit her requirements. Having previously published another Subjects: Cooking, lifestyle cookbook for allergen-free desserts, and a popular online platform through her blog and writing Agent: Kelvin Kong projects, Amanda is eager to further share her knowledge and experiences. It’s resources like these that she wished she had while growing up. Publication: April 2019 Publisher: TouchWood Editions The recipes in Everyone's Welcome dispel the myth that allergen-free foods are also flavour-free (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ and fun-free. The allergens that each recipe is free from are clearly listed. Ranging from break- translation rights) fast to dinner, and quick snacks, there is something for everyone. The simplicity of the recipes will suit readers who are on the go, such as students, busy parents, professionals, and those with Rights Sold: little time to cook. Recipes will be accompanied by Amanda’s stunning photography. -TouchWood Editions (World)

Recent statistics show that in the United States, 8% of children have food allergies, and among that number, almost 40% have a history of severe allergic reactions to food and 30% have multiple food allergies. In Canada, food allergies are present in 10% of children in urban areas, and 6% who are in rural areas. Food allergies are on the rise, and this book will be increasingly useful not just to immediate sufferers, but to their family, their friends, coworkers, teachers, and camp counsellors; it’s a book for all ages.

Amanda Orlando is the author and photographer of Allergen-Free Desserts, and is the co-founder of EverydayAllergenFree.com, a site for teens and young adults living with food allergies. In her spare time she loves to cook and bake, and can be found in the kitchen for hours on end. Her photography is inspired by bright, fresh ingredients and her family’s Italian recipes. Her focus is inclusivity for people with allergies or other dietary restrictions; in her kitchen, everyone’s welcome. Amanda currently lives in Toronto.

33 Non-Fiction Hana Shafi Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty: Affirmations for the Real World

“With her brash wit and honesty on display, this is the book that Frizz Kid / Hana Shafi fans (and new fans) have been waiting for.” —Vivek Shraya, author of The Subtweet

“Reading this book not only makes us feel more hopeful, it might just make us smarter, too.” —Bif Naked, Singer and songwriter

Let’s get one thing straight: Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty: Affirmations for the Real World is not a book of advice. You’re not going to find a step-by-step guide to meditation here, or even reminders to drink lots of water and get enough sleep. Those things are all good for you, but that’s not what Hana Shafi wants to talk about.

Instead, Small, Broke, and Kind of Dirty—built around art from Shafi’s popular online affirma- Publication: September 2020 tion series—focuses on our common and never-ending journey of self-discovery. It explores Publisher: the ways in which the world can all too often wear us down, and reminds us to remember our Book*hug worth, even when it’s hard to do so. Drawing on her experience as a millennial woman of colour, (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ and writing with humour and a healthy dose of irreverence, Shafi delves into body politics and translation rights) pop culture, racism and feminism, friendship, and allyship. Through it all, she remains positive without being saccharine, and hopeful without being naive. Rights Sold: -Book*hug (World) So no, this is not an advice book: it’s a call to action, one that asks us to remember that we are valid as we are—flaws and all—and to not let the bastards grind us down.

Hana Shafi (a.k.a. Frizz Kid) is a writer and artist. Her visual art and writing frequently explores themes such as feminism, body politics, racism, and pop culture. Her first book, It Begins with the Body, was listed by CBC as one of the Best Poetry Books of 2018. A graduate of Ryerson University’s Journal- ism Program, she has published articles in The Walrus, Hazlitt, THIS Magazine, and Torontoist, and has been featured on Buzzfeed, CBC, and in Flare, Shameless, and The New York Times. Known on Instagram for her weekly affirmation series, Shafi is the recipient of the 2017 Women Who Inspire Award, from the Canadian Council for Muslim Women. Born in Dubai, Shafi immigrated with her family to Mississauga, in 1996. She lives and works in Toronto.

34 Non-Fiction Johanna Skibsrud The Nothing That Is: Essays on Art, Literature and Being “Skibsrud adds brilliantly to what we can know of poetry. By entering into the words of Woolf, Oppen, Stephens, Rukeyser, Carson and others, and thinking in our presence, she gives us the experience of touch and beauty and the poem. A friend to Burke’s sublime and to Pato’s at the limit, this book urges us to receive poetry’s “nothing,” for here an abundance lives. Put The Nothing That Is into the hands of whoever is puzzled by or afraid of poetry, into the hands of whoever teaches it!” –Erín Moure

“Why do I find Skibsrud’s consideration of Nothing essentially hopeful? Because her approach to the possibilities of thinking Nothing arise out of, and include, the despair of Celan’s babble – which is to say the incomprehensible, a place where all known structures, including language, have fallen away. Skibsrud invites us to participate in the very human process of re-seeing and remaking the world; she challenges us to venture with her into the unknown, where experience and language empty themselves, then create themselves anew.” Subjects: Essays, art, literature –Sam Ace, author of Our Weather Our Sea Publication: October 2019 Written over a period of more than a decade, The Nothing That Is is a collection about the very Publisher: Book*hug concept of “nothing,” approached from a variety of angles and in a variety of ways. (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ translation rights) Addressing a broad range of topics and works by contemporary writers and artists, these es- Rights Sold: says seek to decentre our relationship to both the “givenness” of history and to a predictive or -Book*hug (World) probable model of the future. They do so by drawing attention to the ways that poetic language activates the multiple, and as yet undesignated, possibilities replete within our every moment, and within every encounter between a speaking “I” and what exceeds subjectivity—a listening “Other,” be it community or the objective world.

Johanna Skibsrud is a novelist, poet and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arizona. Her debut novel, The Sentimentalists, was awarded the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, mak- ing her the youngest writer to win Canada’s most prestigious literary prize. The book was subsequently shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Award and is currently translated into five languages. The New York Times Book Review describes her most recent novel, Quartet for the End of Time (2014) as a “haunting” exploration of “the complexity of human relationships and the myriad ways in which identity can be malleable.” Johanna is also the author of two collections of short fiction: This Will Be Difficult to Explain (2011; shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award) and Tiger, Tiger (2018), a children’s book, and three books of poetry. Her latest poetry collection, The Description of the World (2016), was the recipi- ent of the 2017 Canadian Author’s Association for Poetry and the 2017 Fred Cogswell Award. Johanna’s poems and stories have been published in Zoetrope, Ecotone, and Glimmertrain, among numerous other Photo credit: Christine Whelan-Hachey credit: Photo journals. A novel, Island, will also be published by Hamish Hamilton in fall 2019.

35 Non-Fiction Erin Wunker Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life —Winner, 2017 Evelyn Richardson Non-fiction Award — —Winner, 2017 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award — —Finalist for the 2017 Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing— —Quill and Quire 2016 Book of the Year Selection— —Best Book of 2017, The Coast Halifax—

“This book offers a powerful plea for a feminism that is willing to kill any joy that derives from inequality and injustice. All feminist killjoys will want this book on their shelves!” –Sara Ahmed, former director of the Centre for Feminist Research and professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths (London), and author of Living a Feminist Life

“Wunker renders the label “feminist killjoy” one that readers can be proud to wear.” –Becky Robertson, Quill and Quire (starred review) Subjects: Essays, feminism Publication: November 2016 “Notes from a Feminist Killjoy is an answer to what is needed now—a self-consciously contin- gent rejoinder to the question of “who needs feminism?”–Christina Turner, rabble.ca Publisher: Book*hug (K2 Literary selling UK/ANZ/ Erin Wunker is a feminist killjoy, and she thinks you should be one, too. translation rights) Rights Sold: Following in the tradition of Sara Ahmed (the originator of the concept “feminist killjoy”), -Book*hug (World) Wunker brings memoir, theory, literary criticism, pop culture, and feminist thinking together in this collection of essays that take up Ahmed’s project as a multi-faceted lens through which to -Vigilantes/Les Presses de read the world from a feminist point of view. l’Université de Montréal (World French) Neither totemic nor complete, the non-fiction essays that make up Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: -Editorial Chirimbote (Argentina) Essays on Everyday Life attempt to think publicly about why we need feminism, and especially -Sinsabooks (Korea) why we need the figure of the feminist killjoy, now. From the complicated practices of being a mother and a feminist, to building friendship amongst women as a community-building -Cumartesi Kitaplıgı (Turkey) and -sustaining project, to writing that addresses rape culture from the Canadian context and beyond, Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life invites the reader into a conversa- tion about gender, feminism, and living in our inequitable world.

Erin Wunker is Chair of the Board of the national non-profit organization Canadian Women in the Literary Arts (www.cwila.com) and co-founder, writer, and managing editor of the feminist academic blog Hook & Eye: Fast Feminism, Slow Academe. She teaches courses in Canadian literature and cultural production with a special focus on cultural production by women. She lives in Halifax with her partner, their daughter, and Marley the dog. Notes from a Feminist Killjoy is Wunker’s first book. Photo credit: Bart Vautour credit: Photo

36 Non-Fiction Julia Zarankin Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder Julia Zarankin is a delight, and so is her witty, charming, self-deprecating memoir, Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder. By turns hilarious and moving, it traces Julia’s journey—almost against her will—into the world of birds and birding, where she ultimately finds a reflection of herself in the feathered migrants to which she becomes enthralled. –Scott Weidensaul, author of Living on the Wind “Everyone who loves birds has arrived at their interest by a unique route, but few can describe their journey with the eloquence that Julia Zarankin brings to this sparkling memoir. With hu- mor and poignancy, she tells a deeply personal story that manages to shine a light on universal themes.” –Kenn Kaufman, author of Kingbird Highway “This moving, quirky memoir isn’t about birds so much as falling in love with the world, its everyday wonders and absurdities. With refreshing candour and curiosity, Julia Zarankin shows us how to pay attention—to what we hope to see, and above all, to the unexpected.” –Kate Harris, author of Lands of Lost Borders Subjects: “A love song to the beauty of birding and a reminder that we should all spend more time looking Memoir, nature, migration up.” –Anne Bokma, author of My Year of Living Spiritually Agent: Kelvin Kong When Julia Zarankin saw her first red-winged blackbird at the age of thirty-five, she didn’t ex- Publication: September 2020 pect that it would change her life. Recently divorced and auditioning hobbies during a stressful career transition, she stumbled on birdwatching, initially out of curiosity for the strange breed Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre of humans who wear multi-pocketed vests, carry spotting scopes and discuss the finer points of Rights Sold: optics with disturbing fervour. What she never could have predicted was that she would become one of them. Not only would she come to identify proudly as a birder, but birding would ulti- -Douglas & McIntyre mately lead her to find love, uncover a new language and lay down her roots. (North America, English) Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder tells the story of finding meaning in midlife through birds. The book follows the peregrinations of a narrator who learns more from birds than she ever anticipated, as she begins to realize that she herself is as a migratory species: born in the former Soviet Union, growing up in Vancouver and Toronto, studying and working in the United States and living in Paris. Coming from a Russian immigrant family of concert pianists who believed that the outdoors were for “other people,” Julia Zarankin recounts the challenges and joys of unexpectedly discovering one’s wild side and finding one’s tribe in the unlikeliest of places. Zarankin’s thoughtful and witty anecdotes illuminate the joyful experience of a new discovery and the surprising pleasure to be found while standing still on the edge of a lake at six a.m. In addition to confirmed nature enthusiasts, this book will appeal to readers of literary memoir, offering keen insight on what it takes to find one’s place in the world.

Julia Zarankin is a Toronto-based writer and aspiring birdsplainer with a particular fondness for sewage lagoons. Her writing has appeared in The Walrus, Orion Magazine, Threepenny Review, Antioch Review, Birding Magazine, Maisonneuve, The New Quarterly, Ontario Nature and The Globe and Mail. Julia’s essays are also featured in several anthologies, including The M Word (Goose Lane), The Unpublished City (Book*hug), and Body and Soul (Caitlin Press). Julia won the Eden Mills Liter- ary Festival Nonfiction Prize and has been first runner-up for PRISM International’s nonfiction prize, a finalist for the TNQ Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest, and twice longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. When she isn’t writing, Julia lectures to lifelong learners about Russian culture and literature in venues across Toronto, and leads tours to Russia and the Caucasus with Worldwide Quest. Her birding/ life aspirations: “To sport the hairdo of a Cedar Waxwing, acquire the wardrobe of a Northern Flicker, and develop the confidence of a Ross’s Goose.” Julia lives in Toronto. Photo credit: Claire Sibonney Claire credit: Photo

37 children's/YA Children’s/Young Adult Charlene Challenger One Thousand Fireflies

Diana is a daughter of privilege born into the Zsuth family dynasty. The sons of Zsuth have ruled the country of West Solvo for over a century by maintaining a tyrannical cult of personal- ity and constantly threatening their enemies with annihilation. Oblivious to the suffering of the West Solvic people, Diana's ignorance is shattered when, upon Cover her father's death, she's disguised as a young man and declared the Fourth Beloved Magistrate of to the country. come Thrust into the public eye, terrorized by her jealous brothers, and surrounded by sycophants and psychopaths alike, Diana must learn to navigate an increasingly hostile political atmosphere before she's deposed and executed, and the entire country suffers the havoc of war.

One Thousand Fireflies is an unnerving glimpse into the selfishness that can drive us, and the violent consequences of a young and willful ignorance. It is a timeless coming of age story, with a heroine whose redemption will only come if she is brave enough to embrace her own compli- Age Group: Young Adult cated humanity. Agent: Kelvin Kong Rights Sold: -Manuscript available

Charlene Challenger is a writer and graduate of Ryerson Theatre School. Her first novel, the young adult fantasy The Voices in Between (Tightrope Books) was nominated for the 2015 Aurora Award for Best Young Adult Novel and long-listed for the 2015 Sunburst Award Young Adult Novel category. Its sequel, The Myth in Distance, was published in 2016. Her work is also featured in Stone Skin Press's Gods, Memes and Monsters. She lives in Pickering, Ontario with her family and her adorable house- wolves, Omi and Muffin.

39 Co-Agents

France/Netherlands (Adult) Greece: JLM Literary Agency Italy/Spain/Portugal (Children’s/YA): John Moukakos Lora Fountain Agency [email protected] Lora Fountain [email protected] Japan (Fiction): Tuttle-Mori Japan Misa Morikawa Italy (Fiction): Ella Sher Agency [email protected] Ella Sher Ken Mori [email protected] [email protected] Italy (Nonfiction): AC2 Japan (Nonfiction): Japan Uni Agency Anna Mioni Megumi Sakai [email protected] [email protected]

Spain/Portugal/Latin America (Adult), China/Taiwan: The Grayhawk Agency Eastern Europe: Livia Stoia Literary Agency/Ilustrata Ping Chang (fiction) Livia Stoia [email protected] [email protected] Clare Chi (children's and fiction) Lidia Dumitru [email protected] [email protected] Antonia Girmacea Yichan Pent (non-fiction) [email protected] [email protected]

Turkey: Anatolialit Agency Korea: Duran Kim Agency Amy Spangler (fiction) Duran Kim [email protected] [email protected] Cansu Canseven (fiction) Sienna Jo [email protected] [email protected]

Doğan Terzi (nonfiction) Southeast Asia: Tuttle-Mori [email protected] Pimolporn Yutisri Dilek Akdemir (children's/YA) [email protected] [email protected] South Africa: Lennon-Ritchie Agency Cansu Akkoyun (children's/YA) Aoife Lennon-Ritchie [email protected] [email protected]

Israel: Deborah Harris Agency Geula Geurts [email protected] Fiction

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